Jumping is a classic fun pastime, whether skipping rope, hopscotching or trampoline rebounding, jumping has been enjoyed as a fun activity for generations. Kids from two to 82 love to jump for fun and for joy, but there are more benefits to the basic hop than putting a smile on your face. Jumping can keep your heart happy and healthy! Here are just a few ways that jumping on a trampoline can help your heart.

Prevent and Treat Heart Disease

The leading cause of death in the United States has been Heart Disease. This deadly disease has staked its claim at the top of the charts for years since modern medicine has allowed us to overcome contagious disease and even combat cancers. Heart disease continues to claim the lives of over 600,000 Americans each year and is responsible for nearly a quarter of all American deaths.

According to the American Heart Association, some ways to protect your heart and reduce your chances of heart diseases include eating a diet low in salt, processed sugar, fat, and cholesterol; avoid excessive alcohol; not smoking; exercise regularly, and reduce stress. Although jumping can do nothing about your diet or any substances you may put into your body, it can help with the last two, pretty easily! Jumping on a trampoline is an intense cardiovascular workout and allows you to work out three times harder than alternative cardio activities. Ten minutes on a trampoline is like running for 30 minutes! Since trampoline rebounding is as enjoyable as it is hard, it also helps reduce cortisol — the stress hormone — levels in your body while increasing endorphins — the happy hormone.

Your heart is an incredible, resilient machine that pumps all the blood in your body through your body in about a minute! All the while, your heart is also supplying its own, separate circulatory system to provide oxygen-rich blood to its own muscles. All this is incredible, but what is even more amazing is that your heart has the ability to create new blood vessels in your heart and body! This is not to suggest that trampoline jumping is the equivalent to a do-it-yourself bypass surgery, but that regular cardiovascular exercise can help create new blood vessels to help reduce complications of damaged vessels.

Build Cardiovascular Endurance

Building cardiovascular endurance helps prevent a multitude of health problems, including hypertension and cardiac hypertrophy. Hypertension (or high blood pressure) is caused by a multitude of things but is ultimately an increase in pressure in your vascular system. Your heart and your blood vessels should continually contract and relax to push the blood throughout your body. However, when the blood meets resistance, it must be forced through vessels and the vessels never get a chance to fully relax— this is hypertension. Hypertension can cause a heart attack or stroke, which can both result in death. Cardiac hypertrophy is the thickening of the heart muscle. This may not sound like a bad thing, after all, thick heart muscles mean strong, right? It’s not that simple. Your heart is the hardest working muscle in your (and by far the most important one!), when it continually has to work hard to pump blood, it toughens and gets thick. This means it not only loses its flexibility, but it also loses space for blood to fill.

By engaging in regular, intense cardiovascular exercise, your heart has to work hard for short spurts of time. During this time, it is becoming more efficient at working while at rest. Jumping can actually help slow your resting your heart rate, which means your heart isn’t working so hard.

Prevent and Treat Obesity

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 2016 nearly 40 percent of American adults and 18 percent of American children were obese; meaning they had a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 percent body fat. These staggering numbers do not include those who fall into the “overweight” category with a BMI between 25 and 29 percent. Obesity is directly related to heart disease, stroke (America’s number five killer), Type 2 Diabetes, and some cancers (America’s number two killer).

Ways to prevent or correct overweight and obesity is healthy eating and regular exercise. Here again, trampoline rebounding does little to correct what is consumed but has a direct — and significant — impact on cardiovascular (fat-burning) exercise. Regular jumping can help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight and combat obesity!

At Rebounderz Indoor Trampoline Park of Jacksonville, Florida, we take heart health as serious as we do fun and trampoline safety. Regardless of your age, hop on over to our Extreme Fun Center and work on your cardiovascular health by having fun with us!